Behind you, soldier of Poland,
when you hang on the gallows, or when you perish in the slow agony of
the Siberian desert, there wave no mighty banners. . . When you die, no
one will feed your children: your fellow citizens will disown you; your
compatriots will forget you. . . Your offspring will be reared in the
gutter. . . And cutthroats will be their guardians. . . All is against
you: reticence, fear, hatred, the protests of the ruling class, the
jangling of factory bells, the intrigues of the cowards, and the dark
ignorance of poverty. the frightened eyes of national self-bondage peer
at you through cracks and holes, from behind buildings and corners. . .
Your destiny is death for holy ideals, death without consolation, death
without fame. . . You crept out of darkness of the autumn night, with
the wild wind moaning and the rain beating down, whilst the rest
of us, twenty million strong, slept in our beds, sunk in the deep
slumber of slaves. . . And yet, soldier, your steps resound with a
lonely echo in the secret hearts of the people. . . Legends will arise
from the pools of congealed blood - legends such as Poland has not yet
heard. . . For the poetry of Poland will not forsake you, will not
betray you or insult you. . . Poetry alone will be faithful, however
lost your cause. . . Poetry will cover your corpse. . . with a mantle of
nobility. . . Between your deathly, stiffened hands, she will place her
golden dream. . . the dream of a knight-errant lance!
From Stefan Zeromski, Dream of the sword
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While Poland the European superpower of the 14th-17th century had no
problems with its national identity and sovereignty, the later
historical tribulations have impressed an indelible mark on its
literature. As the longest period of 'geographical nonexistence'
coincided with the Romantic era in European art, the response to the
problem was heavily influenced by its representatives' (often
contrasting) ideas and approaches: the irrational, the spiritual; the
individualistic, the national, the messianic; the traditional and the
revolutionary. Poland's literature of the 19th century was both a cause
and a result of its doomed insurrections. Later trends were always
confronted, willingly or unwillingly, with the powerful legacy of
Poland's great Romantics; what is more, the Romantic ethos stubbornly
recurred with every new historical trauma of the 19th and the 20th
centuries. Obviously, each period of relative national security brought
a powerful reaction to the Romantic ideal and attempts at treeing the
literature of the country from this weighty burden. Needless to say, the
Romantic element itself was also constantly updated with new themes and
realizations.
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